The apparatus generally relates to vaporization and personal vaporizers, colloquially referred to as ‘e-cigarettes.’ More specifically, the apparatus relates to a personal vaporizer with an atypical airflow structure for vaporizing inhalation products.
Personal portable vaporizers are known in the art. At a basic level these apparatus use power from a battery connected to a vaporizing element to heat a vaporization material to its vapor point for inhaling by a user. An on-board reservoir usually contains a sufficient quantity of vaporization material for several repeated vaporization events. Personal vaporizers were designed as an alternative to cigarettes and similar products that are combusted prior to inhalation, since vaporizing products designed for inhalation are thought to avoid generating harmful combustion byproducts.
Conventional vaporizers have a significant drawback in that the vaporizing element is typically a thin wire filament wound helically around a ‘wick’ of porous material. The vaporization material, normally oil-based, soaks the wick, and once the vaporizing element sufficiently heats the wick, the material vaporizes, with the vapor inhaled by the user. Usually, the wick material used is synthetic, including silica thread (aka sodium silicate). When overheated, this material has a tendency to burn, releasing harmful byproducts, such as silica fragments that cause damage to a user's lungs and other ill health effects.
Conventional vaporizers also have the drawback of sequestering ambient air from adjacent the battery, which can cause damage when residue of the vaporizing material exits an air port near the battery and corrodes the terminals. Since vaporizers are typically carried ‘mouth-up’, any residual vaporizing material has a tendency to move under gravitational forces toward and out of the air port, leading to hastened damage and malfunctioning of the vaporizer.
Hence, what is needed is a personal vaporizer that provides for vaporization without requiring a wick, and which provides an atypical pathway for air and vaporization residue not prone to leakage.